Bootstrap Web Marketing SEO Social Media

Bootstrap Web Marketing: SEO & Social Media • Who I am • Disclaimer • Format of the presentation

SEO

Why SEO Kicks Ass • Other than effort, it’s free. • The skillset required for the time intensive work is relatively inexpensive. • SEO is the gift that keeps on giving

Why SEO Doesn’t Kick Ass • SEO is a fast-changing world. • You live and die by Google. • It’s delayed gratification (and there’s a chance of NO gratification)

SEO Ranking Factors – Markup / Keywords (most startups do fine here) • • • Title Tag H 1 Tag Body Text Domain Name URL

SEO Ranking Factors – Other Markup • Popularity within internal linking (very important for long tail or low competition keywords) • Quality of OUTGOING links • Page updates

SEO Ranking Factors – Overall Site Popularity • Global popularity of your site (combination of link quantity/quality) • Age of site • Site performance (time on page, bookmarks, etc. )

Inbound Links • Relevance of inbound links • Anchor text (Google bomb) and adjacent text.

Negative Factors • Duplicate Content – Very Similar Pages – Identical Page Titles / Meta Info • Keyword stuffing?

Keyword Research (most startups suck at this)

How to Evaluate Keywords? • How many people are searching for a particular word/phrase? • How competitive is the landscape for that word/phrase? • How relevant is the keyword? • Actionable keywords? “lowest price wii” – Measure the conversion! • Non-bouncing keywords

How do people search? • # of words – 28. 9% 2 word phrases – 27. 8% 3 word phrases – 17. 1% 4 word phrases – 11. 4% 1 word phrases • 62% click on the first result • 21% feel search engines don’t understand their query

Keyword Research – Have someone else do it • http: //www. seoresearchlabs. com/ : $99. 95

Count, relevance (entered by you) and # of targeted searches per day Estimated monthly clickthru for 1 st, 5 th, and 10 th position on each major engine. Competitiveness of each keyword

Keyword Research – Do It Yourself

Overture Keyword Research Tool (free) • Source: Yahoo and Affiliates • Notes: Doesn’t distinguish singular and plural • Not an ideal tool for exact phrases

Word. Tracker. com ($8/day) • Source: Dogpile (. 6%)and Meta. Crawler (. 4%) (what kinda people use these engines!? )

Adwords Traffic Estimator (free, req. Ad. Words account) • Source: Google • Notes: Not good for long tail phrases

Other Resources • Yahoo Search Marketing Tool • Keyword. Discovery. com • Google Trends • Estimated monthly clickthru for 1 st, 5 th, and 10 th position on each major engine.

Best Resource – Pay for It • Buy an Adwords campaign for a phrase. Pay enough to get your ad on the first page. Metrics will show you the number of ad views.

Spiderability

Can Search Engines Find Every Page/view on Your Site? • Create a “sitemap” (HTML and/or XML) • Be mindful of internal link text • Remember that internal link popularity is important (more than 1 link is better than one link) – “Related content” buckets are valuable • Most important for sites with lots of data hidden behind a search interface

Effective Presentation on SERPs • Readable, compelling, objective title (65 characters) • Readable, compelling, objective meta description (155 characters) • Short URLs perform better • Stuffed titles, descriptions, and URLs look spammy and don’t get clicks

Title Meta-Description URL

Npost Example

Keyword Research: “Tech Startup Jobs”? Markup for SEO: Title tag, <h 1> tag, referring anchor tag

If you were a search spider, what would you click on to find “seattle rails jobs”?

What about here? No spiderability! Site Structure for SEO: Keyword targeted pages linked to (flat site structure). Internal link popularity is important.

SERP Title: For the target phrase “rails jobs seattle”, the title should lead with “Rails Jobs in Seattle, WA” or somesuch. Description: meta description should be unique and compelling. URL: Short urls perform better

Link Building Campaigns

Anotomy of a Link Building Campaign • • Links from trusted sites. Links to “deep” pages in your site. Links with good anchor text Links from good pages – Home pages – Content pages • Links from relevant pages • No Java. Script / no ‘nofollow’!

Value of Building Links • People click on them! • Branding • And, of course, SEO

Anatomy of a Good Link Source • Search for your top keywords/phrases – the top 100 -150 or so are worth getting links from. • Content rich page • Links deep to the most relevant page • Anchor text, title tag, h 1 tag, etc all match to the keyword in question

Who to Ask for Links • Any relevant site • Good way to find sites to ask are to find sites that link to your competitions’ sites. – Linkdomain: mycompetition. com • Linkdomain: mycompetition. com “my keywords”

How to Ask for Links • First, see if there is a standard procedure for getting links • Second, see if you (as a user) can post a link (comments, look for nofollow), forums, etc. (Be careful of abuse) • If not, ask for it. • If necessary (if you can), buy it.

Say Thanks for EVERY Link That You Can • Set up a google alert for your business name • Any time you get ANY mention, stop by and say THANKS • Any time you get criticized, stop by and respectfully engage in the conversation (and keep it going!)

Social Media Marketing (Big linkbuilding Opportunities!)

Linkbait (It’s Easy!) • Defined as something that people want to link to, blog about, talk about, digg, vote up, etc. The good news is, baiting web geeks words. • Write something – Useful – Funny – Controversial • Better yet, have your standard content pages be – Useful – Funny – Controversial • To get a feel for linkbait, head over to popurls. com (list of top digg, reddit, del. icio. us links) • Would you bookmark this? Would you email it to your friends?

Headlines/titles Win the Day • • • “Who wants [blank]? ” “The Secret of [blank]? ” Little known ways to [blank]? ” Lists – Top 5, Top 10, etc. (useful, funny, controversial)

Top Social Media Venues • Digg, Del. icio. us, Reddit, Stumble. Upon, etc. • Blogs (all blogs matter, top blogs matter more) – (check source for nofollow tag / server redirects ) • Forums – (check source for nofollow tag / server redirects ) • Public Profiles (anywhere) • Directories • Design Portals

Go Viral • Ideally, using your product is an inherently public act that elicits others to jump on board • Viral is not a marketing strategy, it’s a product strategy – "Tell a friend" – Widget embeds – Addressbook importing • (These don’t make your product viral, but they’ll help it if it is) • First priority is creating something that is useful, funny, controversial enough that people want to share it • Second priority is making it easy